LALCHAND DEVANDAS Vs. FOOD INSPECTOR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an application in revision from the concurrent decisions of the lower Courts convicting the three applicants under Sections 7 and 16 (i) of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act and sentencing each of them to a fine of Rs. 1000 with imprisonment in default. The applicants Nos. 1 and 2, who are father and son, are the owners of shop selling food-grains and ghee, inter alia, while applicant No. 3, who is also a son of Devandas, has 'been described as a servant of the shop. Actually, he is the person who sold one quarter seer of ghee properly socalled to the Food Inspector, Dr. Trivedi, on the 6th October, 1980 which on analysis was found to be below the standard and, as the data show, very much below the standard prescribed for ghee. Accordingly, he and the owners were prosecuted and convicted. The defence on facts was that the shop had been licensed to sell only what is called vegetable ghee and not ghee properly so called. The Food Inspector, however, was very much in need o? it, and requested Narayandas to procure a quarter seer somehow and from somewhere. Accordingly, Narayandas brought it from his residence which was in the same building but on the upper storey while the shop; was on the lower. He took the price all right, but it was not sale at the shop but was really a favour shown to the Food Inspector.

(2.) THE sale was of course by Narayandas as the price had been taken and, as the panchnama shows, it was a sale at the shop. But all the same the applicant examined two witnesses including one of the panchas, in support of his story. The Court rightly disbelieved it and held that the sale was at the shop of ghee kept for the purpose of sale. Whether or not there was a separate licence for selling ghee at the shop and whether there was a licence given by the municipality for the sale of vegetable gone at that place, are questions which really do not arise for consideration; the crucial issue being whether the ghee was sold, which admittedly it was, whether it was at the shop out of stock kept there for the purpose of sale, which the Court has found on the facts.

(3.) THE two points of law canvassed here are firstly, that the Food Inspector had contravened the requirements of Section 10 (7) of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, the provisions which are meant to protect citizens from victimisation by overzealous or evil minded Food Inspector. Secondly, whatever may be the position in regard to Narayandas who actually sold the ghee, this was not a case in which the two other applicants could be held vicariously liable. This was because ghee was not one of the articles meant to be sold at the shop and the servant's conduct in selling it was so far outside the scope of the business that there could be no vicarious liability at all.